Chuck Grassley: “next week the President's budget will come to Capitol Hill. In terms of tax issues, no issue is more pressing in the…”

“next week the President's budget will come to Capitol Hill. In terms of tax issues, no issue is more pressing in the upcoming budget than resolving the alternative minimum tax issue for both the short term as well as the long term. As many Members know, the so-called patch--the temporary fix we did last year for the alternative minimum tax so no more people would be hit by it than are presently hit by it--ran out at the end of last year. So right now 23 million people in the year 2007 could be hit by the alternative minimum tax, if we do not do something about it. Since we have to offset things such as this, if we patch this up again, it is going to take $50 billion to offset or, if it isn't offset, that means $50 billion that would come into the Federal Treasury under existing law would not come in. Next week I will give a series of speeches in some detail. I am going to look at how we got where we are on the alternative minimum tax. I will examine the history of the alternative minimum tax and the origins of the current problem. In another speech, I am going to discuss the fiscal effects of maintaining, repealing, and replacing the alternative minimum tax. And in the third speech, I will talk about options to remedy the alternative minimum tax problem in the short term and over the long term.”